Home Solar Power ??

[Rastus]

How are those Renogy manufactured devices holding up? 

[alfsauve]

They're fine, so far, but then it's a pretty idle system.  Not a lot of use output wise.   I check on it whenever I'm in the store/work room.  Always at 100% unless I just ran the belt sander.  I think Renogy is targeted towards the RV/Boat/Trailer market, for what that's worth.

With prices down, I do toy with replacing the gel cells with LiFiPo, but I'll probably wait until I need to replace them.  Or I come up with some other project.  I did buy a Jackery 300W all-in-one unit that I can use portable.  Take it out for tailgate events to run electronics.  Would run them off the truck inverter but it requires the truck engine be running.  I may add another slightly more powerful unit as their prices are way down as well.

[Big Frank]

Can you have gel/wet cells and LiFePo batteries together in one system, or do they need different chargers or something? When I was looking at a lithium battery for my ATV it couldn't use a regular battery charger.

[Rastus]

Can you have gel/wet cells and LiFePo batteries together in one system, or do they need different chargers or something? When I was looking at a lithium battery for my ATV it couldn't use a regular battery charger.

You cannot hook them up together like they were a bunch of like batteries.  If you separate each of them and then run each of them separately through some type of power charger/inverter/voltage regulator (I know of none such that exists as a single unit) then you could mix and match.  The control device would cost more than whatever mix and match perceived savings.  Just my 2 cents....

[Rastus]

They're fine, so far, but then it's a pretty idle system.  Not a lot of use output wise.   I check on it whenever I'm in the store/work room.  Always at 100% unless I just ran the belt sander.  I think Renogy is targeted towards the RV/Boat/Trailer market, for what that's worth.

With prices down, I do toy with replacing the gel cells with LiFiPo, but I'll probably wait until I need to replace them.  Or I come up with some other project.  I did buy a Jackery 300W all-in-one unit that I can use portable.  Take it out for tailgate events to run electronics.  Would run them off the truck inverter but it requires the truck engine be running.  I may add another slightly more powerful unit as their prices are way down as well.

I've gotten good service from our Jackery 300.  We mostly use it to power desk lamps and such when the juice goes out.  I think if you want a larger unit you may want to look sooner than later.  With tariffs on the way I suspect battery prices are going up soon.  I'm probably buying my barn batteries this week.

[Sponsor]

[alfsauve]

Gel and LiFePo have to have different chargers so you can’t have them hooked together when charging. And you must have different chargers for each .  It’s possible to use very large diodes as an isolator between sets of batteries so they cannot cross charge. 100A diodes run $25 to $50 each, you’d need one for each battery type.  HOWEVER, complications can arise because of different discharge rates.  Not recommended but doable.

This is very common in backup battery situations, such as planes and boats, where the batteries can be switched in and out of the circuit, but share a common charger.  The circuitry is a little different, but the same diodes.  In planes/boats it’s a common charger with different or switched loads. In a solar app it different chargers with the same load.